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The Association of Lactation Consultants in Ireland booked US consultant Jacob Engelsman to lecture at its October Galway conference on “lactation support for gender-diverse families.” Engelsman specialises in chemically inducing lactation in men who have never given birth.
In his own book he lists reasons that include curiosity, fun or sexual gratification. He has also delivered a talk titled “Inducing Lactation for Kinksters” at an adult fetish convention. ALCI receives HSE grant funding. Ireland already records some of Europe’s lowest breastfeeding rates.
The HSE publicly defended the event even as Health Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill faced calls to intervene.
SnD Media spoke with JK Lunden of the Natural Women’s Council yesterday who had contacted the Ardilaun Hotel manager directly and wrote to the hotel, ALCI, HSE, TUSLA and the Children’s Ombudsman, and argued the booking concealed the speaker’s kink-related work. She confirmed that after a respectful conversation with the Ardilaun Hotel manager the event was cancelled. Hotel staff indicated they felt somewhat deceived by the original booking and what was actually due to take place.
The booking triggered public outrage, with many comments describing the practice as paedophilic because it involves using infants for adult sexual gratification.
Critics, including midwives and women’s groups, say using an infant to satisfy an adult sexual interest meets the definition of child sexual abuse: an adult exploiting a child who cannot consent. They call the episode a collapse of safeguarding in a profession whose sole purpose is to feed babies and support mothers, not to accommodate adult fetishes with public money.
All eyes are now on the HSE and the health minister, with pressure mounting for the withdrawal of any public funding that underwrites the sexualisation of infant feeding.
This article was originally published by SnDMedia.
